by Beverly Bird
“Shut up.”
“Oops. I said her name. Sorry about that. Between that and her whole body lying here, hardly disturbed at all—”
He shot the gun again. Four gone. Shadow cringed back as the bullet caromed wildly, waiting for it to tear into her flesh. But the Holy People were with her—maybe it was even She Who Waits who was protecting her, thanking her for taking care of her child. Shadow didn’t know, but it was Eddie who grunted in pain. Her head spun.
Then she froze.
A thud and a muffled curse came from the other room. The voice seared through her, changing everything, rocking her with terror again, but not for herself this time.
The voice was Mac’s.
* * *
It would be a long, hard fall without a rope. In the small space in his heart that wasn’t filled with panic, Mac marveled that Shadow had done it. He finally lowered himself full length through the hole in the first chamber, hanging on to the edge with his hands. He had three extra inches on six feet, but when he let go the impact still shot pain up through his ankles, driving the sensation out of his legs.
He let himself fall, intending to roll right back to his feet again, but his legs were too numb and wouldn’t cooperate. He swore, sitting where he was for a moment, looking around warily.
He wasn’t sure what he had expected to find in here. Shadow’s body propped beside the others? It wasn’t there. Thank God. He realized that relief would have kept him from moving temporarily even if his legs hadn’t gone lifeless. It almost literally rocked through him.
But it was short-lived. He had heard a gunshot when he was up above in the dwellings, a sharp report that had echoed oddly beneath his feet. And the upper half of the moving wall was pushed almost shut now. They hadn’t left it that way, so somebody was in here.
He started to roar her name, then he choked on it as the hairs on his nape lifted. He had the certain sense that someone was watching him. He looked back up at the hole above him.
A man looked in at him.
A Navajo man. Mac needed no more proof than that.
Rage rocketed through him and he staggered to his feet again without any thought that his legs might not hold him. They did, barely, but pain shot up to his hips with the effort. He ignored it with sheer force of will and went for the hole.
“Where is she, you son of a bitch? What did you do with her?”
Jericho reacted with primitive instinct. It flooded his blood—the blood he had inherited from his warrior ancestors. Here was danger, here was an enemy, and a boiling need rose in him to attack. He didn’t register the man’s words. He dropped down through the hole to meet him without any thought for chindis or common sense. It never even occurred to him that the man couldn’t reach him if he stayed up on the roof. He never remembered that he had promised his wife he would be careful.
He landed hard but rolled with the impact, coming up on his feet again, ready—and the man’s fist crashed into his face, stunning him.
Pain exploded and blood flew from his nose. He tasted it at the back of his throat as he reeled. He spat it out in the fraction of a second it took him to recover, to lower his head and barrel into the stranger.
He heard the harsh whoofing sound of the man’s breath being driven out of him. But the stranger recovered fast, too. They staggered together into skeletons, arms locked, too equally matched for either of them to get in a good blow.
Then another primal rush of adrenaline finally gave Jericho an edge. He felt the bones of the skeletons dig into his back as they rolled over them, grappling, and he feared them more than he could any mortal enemy. They made him wild.
He got his hands up to the other man’s windpipe, grasping. His grip slid away as a fist rammed its way into his kidney, but he groped back and pressed his thumbs in hard.
Mac felt his vision darken. Then, blessedly, the Navajo’s grip loosened, because they both went still at the same time.
A scream echoed through the chambers, coming from the other room. They both knew the voice. It was Shadow.
* * *
Shadow stared, stunned, at the top half of the moving wall. Impossible sounds came from that room now. Someone was fighting. Mac...and who else? Who else could possibly have come here? What was going on?
Did Eddie have an accomplice?
Terror made her sway. She had been handling Eddie okay, gaining an edge over him. But in that moment the odds escalated against her with dizzying speed. For one lethal moment she lowered the gun. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Diamond Eddie move fast while her attention was diverted. It was all the opportunity he thought he needed. She screamed as he lunged for her, flinching back, the gun dropping from her suddenly nerveless hand.
Eddie grabbed for her, but he was off-balance and his hand swiped at air. Suddenly she understood. He was trying to attack her from across She Who Waits without touching her bones.
Blood seeped from a wound at his thigh where the ricocheting bullet had struck him. Shadow knew then that that was why he was trying to grab her. He didn’t want to risk shooting in here again.
In a burst of inspiration, she stopped trying to recoil from him. She reached across She Who Waits and grabbed hold of his arm with both her hands. She pulled with all her strength, her shoulder screaming in protest at such abuse. But she managed to drag him into the bones. Eddie went crazy.
Her breath left her as one of his swinging fists caught her in the midriff, seeming to drive her stomach clear up into her throat. Fresh pain blazed from her shoulder as she groped blindly for She Who Waits. Her fingers closed over a long leg bone and she brought it up, cracking him solidly in the head with it, again and again and again. It finally shattered and she made a startled mewling sound, but then she only grabbed another, an arm this time.
When he realized what she was striking him with, Diamond Eddie howled and started gibbering. A chant, she thought wildly. He was trying to sing a chant.
“They won’t help you,” she gasped. “You’re too far gone, Eddie. The Holy People won’t help you. You left the Navajo way.”
She backed up from him, shaking, and scurried around the remaining skeleton into the room. Mac. She had to get to Mac, had to find out what was going on out there in the other chamber, but she was afraid to take her eyes off Eddie. He still had the gun, although he was sobbing now, moaning and shoving at the bones he laid sprawled upon. Frenziedly, he tried to push them away from him. On the other side of She Who Waits, her pots crashed and shattered as his legs thrashed through them.
Finally she saw the gun drop from his hand. She turned around just as the wall slid open again.
“Jericho?” Her jaw dropped and she felt her breath leave her body all over again. His face was smeared with blood.
Her amazed eyes moved past his shoulder and she finally found Mac. He was gathering himself to fight Jericho again, his fist cocked back.
“No!” she screamed. Her voice echoed.
She staggered as Jericho vaulted over the wall, shoving past her. Then Mac came over as well, moving more slowly. She grabbed at him instinctively, still thinking he would go for Jericho again, but then she watched dazedly as they both looked at Diamond Eddie.
Finally, they each caught one of Eddie’s arms.
“Here’s the bastard I think you’re looking for,” Jericho said harshly.
Slowly, lifelessly, Shadow slid down the wall to sit on the floor. Together Mac and Jericho dragged Eddie to his feet, shoving him up hard against the other side.
“Do you want the first shot at him,” Mac asked tightly, “or can I have it?”
“Don’t,” Shadow gasped. “Just...don’t. He’s not... worth it.”
One of them threw Eddie back down on his stomach again—she couldn’t tell who. She finally noticed that Mac was limping badly, almost hobbling, as he went into the other room for the rope they had left there so long ago. But he was alive. He was alive...and here. Had he ever left, or had he come back?
She h
adn’t seen his tent or any of his stuff out in the canyon, so he must have come back.
Why?
Mac brought the rope, and Shadow’s eyes were huge as she watched him tie Eddie. Jericho rolled the little man up against the wall and dragged a hand beneath his bloody nose. Then he looked at his sister.
“You want to tell me what’s really going on now? What the hell have you gotten yourself into?”
Shadow hugged herself. Where to start? she wondered wildly.
“Mac, this is my brother,” she said thinly. “Jericho, this is the guy you were taking me to the airport to find.”
Chapter 18
For a long moment, the two men only looked at each other. Jericho finally nodded, but Mac was clearly confused.
His face hardened in that stony, wary way that made Shadow’s heart skip a beat. She had never thought she’d see that look again. Now it was the most beautiful thing she had ever witnessed in her life.
“Your brother?” he repeated.
Shadow nodded.
“So who’s this?” He thrust a thumb over his shoulder.
“Diamond Eddie.”
“Your boss?”
“As of yesterday, anyway. I wouldn’t put any wagers on tomorrow.”
“I guess you got his job.” Mac needed to think about that, about its implications, but at the moment there was too much else to absorb.
“I guess you could be right.” But Shadow couldn’t think about that now. Shock and disbelief were only starting to filter out of her.
Mac looked at Jericho, at his bloody nose. “So how do you fit in to all this?” he demanded. He still didn’t entirely trust him. “How’d you get here?”
“At about a hundred and ten miles an hour,” Jericho responded. He tilted his head back, pinching off one side of his nose to stop the bleeding.
“Speed limits don’t pertain to him,” Shadow explained dryly. “Fifty-five is for the rest of the Res.”
“What airport?” Mac went on.
“She wanted to go to the Baja.” Jericho lowered his head again cautiously. “I guess you’ll fit in all right.”
“Fit in with what?” Mac asked warily.
“With the family. We tend to be a bunch of hardheaded survivors. Hell of a punch you’ve got there.”
The family. Mac felt panic swim through him, cold and clammy. He wasn’t ready for this, hadn’t even figured out what he was going to say to her yet. He looked around at her.
She had been headed for the Baja.
“You were coming after me? Why?”
Shadow tried to shrug. She flinched with the pain the movement brought, but although Mac was staring at her hard he didn’t seem to notice. She wasn’t ready for this discussion yet, not here, not with her brother watching like a hawk.
“Damn it, Sergeant,” Mac snapped. “Every once in a while you’ve got to let someone else lead the way.”
“I thought I had,” she answered softly, and saw his eyes flare with the memory. Then a faint, cautious voice called down from the hole in the other room.
“Hello? Anybody in there?”
Mac swore. “There’s your reservation cops. Good thing we didn’t really need them.”
Shadow started to her feet again. He reached a hand out to help her but she shook her head, blanching at the very thought. She hugged her arm against her midriff and struggled up on her own.
“My shoulder,” she explained. “I didn’t fall quite right this time.”
She was injured. Mac finally realized it and felt something painful claw through his own body as well. For the first time it really hit him how easily she could have died here. Up until now, there had been mostly panic, rage. He felt it leave him with only something shaky inside.
He wanted to hold her and was afraid he would hurt her. He wanted to bury his face in her hair and let himself love her, and was afraid he would hurt himself. He never wanted to let her out of his sight again, and he still had no idea how he was going to go about it.
“Ah, Sergeant,” he said finally.
There it was again. Sergeant. But at least he wasn’t sending her packing, Shadow thought. Yet.
He put one hand cautiously around her waist and drew her just close enough to rest his chin on the top of her head. For now, it would have to be enough, he thought, to assure himself that she was warm and alive, even if she wasn’t completely unharmed.
“You’re shaking,” she breathed against his chest. He felt so good. For the first time in days, the world seemed truly right again.
“So are you,” he answered.
Jericho watched them a moment, then took a single step toward the other chamber. “I’ll talk to the cops,” he volunteered, then he stopped cold. “I have no idea what to tell them.”
“We’ll do it,” Mac answered. “Then we need to get Shadow to a doctor.”
“I’ve got one who should just about be itching to get back in the saddle by now.”
They went into the other room. The tribal police were peering down through the hole there.
Reluctantly, Mac let Shadow go. Reluctantly, she allowed all of them to help her back up into the dwellings.
* * *
Darkness was gathering in the canyon before they finished telling the authorities everything they knew. The story came out in fractured bits and pieces as Mac and Shadow remembered details. Jericho listened with his brows high. Shadow noticed almost absently that he rubbed his arms more than once against a chill that no one else seemed to feel.
Diamond Eddie’s cache itself was a federal offense, so they had to wait for the FBI and the state boys. But the skeletons in the cave were the responsibility of the tribal police, and Shadow began shaking again as they grilled Eddie about them. She listened as they badgered him into admitting that he had killed each and every brave soul who had risked the legend to camp in the canyon. Finally, fully, it hit her how lucky she was to be alive.
She eased away from Mac where they were sitting against the wall beneath the dwellings. She went down the canyon to the stream and threw up, then she hugged herself. But even after she had splashed cold water on her face, she still felt sick...and a little crazy. His crush on her had had some merit after all, she thought wildly. If not for that, she was sure he would have killed both her and Mac immediately.
She finally went back to rejoin the others.
“I never guessed,” she breathed to Mac, settling beside him again. “All this time I’ve worked with him, and I never knew he had that kind of evil in him. I just thought he was...weird.”
One of the cops came back into the canyon from the mountain. “I called Chinle,” he informed them. “They’re sending a helicopter to get you folks to a hospital.”
Shadow looked around at them. They certainly needed medical help. She couldn’t bring herself to care about Eddie, but Jericho’s nose still spouted occasionally and without warning. Mac’s calves were swollen badly and she didn’t even want to think about her shoulder.
Jericho finally spoke. “We don’t need a hospital,” he said tightly. “Just fly us across the Res to Beautiful Mountain. As soon as possible.” He looked around the canyon warily as the night began to push in on them.
“It’s okay,” Shadow assured him. “I’m absolutely sure now that there isn’t any evil here. Spirits, maybe. But no chindis.”
Her brother’s eyes narrowed on her. She felt Mac look down at her sharply.
“Why?” they demanded together.
“Because only good things have happened here.”
“Good?” Mac said incredulously. “You call that nutcase good?” He thrust a thumb toward Eddie again. “He was going to kill you.”
“But he didn’t. I don’t think She Who Waits would let him. The one shot that should have gotten me ricocheted right back at him.”
The men looked silently at the pot thief. Mac shrugged. Jericho looked dubious.
“There’s still one thing I don’t understand, though,” Shadow went on, looking at her bro
ther. “How did you know to look for me here? I never said anything to any of you about Eddie’s cache.”
“It was Cat’s idea. Woman’s intuition, I guess.” Jericho paused. “That, and the damned chair. I knew something was wrong as soon as I saw the chair in your office. It wasn’t flush with the desk. You wouldn’t have left it that way.”
Mac gave a snorting kind of laugh. She elbowed him in the ribs with her good arm.
“In twenty-nine years,” Jericho went on, “I don’t think I ever saw you walk away and leave something out of order.”
“Thirty,” Shadow amended.
“What?”
“Thirty years. My birthday was last week.”
He looked horrified. She had known he would. But now she was finally able to grin about it.
“Oh, hell,” he muttered. “I’m sorry. I was so wrapped up in Cat and the baby—”
“I know,” she interrupted.
“I’ll make it up to you.”
“You already have.”
He shot her a doubtful look.
“You’re here,” she said simply. “You came to my rescue. Not to mention the fact that by forgetting you sent me barreling out here to the canyon in the first place.” She glanced at Mac and left the rest unsaid.
So that was what had set her off, Mac realized. He suspected it wasn’t so much that her family had forgotten—she would have been able to handle that just fine, with little more than a practical shrug. But the idea of hitting the big 3-0 itself had obviously hit her hard.
Seven years, he remembered, and realized he wasn’t at all sorry that things had unfolded the way they had.
They heard the faint cht-cht sound of chopper blades in the distance. Something squirmed uncomfortably inside him again.
“Where did you say we were going?” he asked Jericho warily.
“To my house. There’s not a thing wrong with any of us that my wife can’t fix, and to tell you the truth, I just want to get home now.”
“What about our vehicles?” Mac demanded, grasping at straws. Suddenly he felt himself sinking, being drawn into something that made him feel both warm and cold. Her family.